Many
of these American schools in the U.S. were also run by churches—Presbyterians,
Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites, Episcopalians, and others.

Like
in Canada, the schools left a legacy of suffering, loss of language, family breakdown and alcohol and drug abuse.

Unlike
in Canada, however, little attention is being paid to the issue in the U.S.

Some
Americans are trying to change that. One person is Denise Lagimodiere, an associate professor in the school of
education at North Dakota State University in Fargo and an enrolled
member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Pembina Chippewa.

She became interested in the issue after
learning family members, including her own father, were boarding school
survivors.

“I never knew these stories existed because my
family members had all maintained silence on their experiences until I began
asking questions,” she says.

Her goal is to see something like the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission occur in the U.S.

America,
she says, is “not even begun the truth-telling part, much less get to
reconciliation.”

But
with no media interest, or attention in Congress, she believes it is up to the
churches in her country to put it on the national agenda.

“We
need the churches,” she says. “We need them to research their schools, where
they were, when they were established, how many students there were. It would
be a recognition of what was done to us.”

She
would also like to see more of them issue apologies, like the United, Anglican
and Presbyterian churches have done in Canada.

“An apology to survivors would be a recognition of what was done
to Native kids,” she says. “Many survivors need that as part of their healing.”

In
her interviews with former boarding school students, she hears “wrenching,
heartbreaking, and traumatic” stories of physical and sexual abuse,
malnutrition, forced labor, religious and cultural suppression, inadequate
medical care, deaths and suicides in the schools.

“The
majority had never spoken a word of their experiences to their children or
grandchildren,” she adds.

When
she asked them what they felt could help heal them from their boarding school
experiences, many said they needed to return to their traditional Native
spirituality.

They
also said that they need to do “something most difficult—to forgive, to get rid
of that hatred, after which they could truly be healed.”

That
healing for many Indigenous Americans, she believes, will only be fostered and
encouraged if the U.S. comes to terms with the way it wronged them through the
boarding schools. And she hopes American churches will be among those who lead
the way.